One by One by Simon Kernick Page B

sitting ducks.’
    â€˜Have you got any better ideas?’ said Luke.
    â€˜Yes. Right now, let’s stay put. The place is pretty secure, and we’ve got food, so we can play a waiting game too. The only way the killer will be able to get us out is if he burns this place down, so let’s make sure we draw the curtains, seal off the letterboxes, and wet some towels so we’re ready for any eventuality.’
    Crispin’s coolness under pressure seemed to galvanize everyone. He was the leader now and everyone recognized that. His words should have made me feel better but, as I went through to the lounge to pull the curtains, my heart beating in my chest as I passed the spot where Louise had been murdered, I thought back to the horrors I’d witnessed that morning. Louise’s severed head with the note sticking out of her mouth; the man in black with his loaded crossbow, stalking me; Charlie’s ruined corpse pinned to a tree. But there was one thing that stuck in my mind above any other. Those five words the killer had written.
    LEAVING THE VERY WORST TILL LAST.
    He’d had me in his sights. He could have killed me earlier. Easily. But he hadn’t. He was leaving me alone. But that wasn’t what frightened me the most.
    What frightened me the most was how he knew I was the worst.

9
    The rain rained and the day dragged.
    Crispin’s plan was for us to stay together downstairs and make sure that no one was left in a room on their own, but it didn’t quite work out like that. People got restless. They moved around. It’s impossible to relax when you’re trapped with individuals you haven’t seen for years in a house in the middle of nowhere, knowing that outside is someone who wants you dead for something you were involved in over two decades ago. Someone who, it seemed, was able to sneak into the house and murder Louise without her making a sound or making any effort to escape.
    At one point, I fell asleep on the sofa, out of pure exhaustion, and when I woke up I was alone in the room. I found Luke in the dining room peering out through a gap in the curtains, a long kitchen knife in one hand. He turned my way when I came in but didn’t say anything, and I left him there.
    I looked for Marla and Crispin but I couldn’t find them anywhere downstairs. In the end, I felt a bit of a panic coming on and I stood at the foot of the stairs and called their names.
    They appeared a minute later, fully clothed, and Crispin told me they’d been watching over the wood from upstairs and apologized for disappearing like that. ‘You were fast asleep,’ he said. ‘And we didn’t want to make too much noise and disturb you.’
    â€˜No problem,’ I said with a forced smile.
    But there
was
a problem. The fact was I was jealous. I didn’t like the way they were acting with each other. They were intimate. Close. It made me wonder how often they’d seen each other since uni and what their relationship was. In my paranoid state it also made me wonder if they had something to do with all this. Either one of them could have killed Louise. And by the same token, either or both of them could have led Charlie outside this morning and killed him, without Luke or me being any the wiser.
    Unfortunately, the theory fell apart the moment you took the man with the crossbow into consideration. But maybe the three of them were in it together? It was hard to believe, of course, especially as Crispin had once been my boyfriend, but then this whole situation was hard to believe, and that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
    â€˜Have you searched the loft?’ I asked him.
    â€˜I had a look up there earlier,’ he said. ‘Right now, this house is as secure as it’s ever going to be and there are no bad guys hiding anywhere.’
    But I wasn’t convinced. For much of the rest of the afternoon, I explored the downstairs rooms, looking for